Publicly Listed Bitcoin Mining Companies Show Steady Increase in Hash Rate
According to a new analysis from Hashrate Index, the first production update of 2023 from publicly listed Bitcoin (BTC) mining companies reveals a consistent increase in hash rate and a surge in BTC production compared to the previous month. These findings are based on a comparison with the previous month.
In January, the vast majority of public miners raised their output of bitcoin, with CleanSpark increasing their production by a whopping 50 percent to achieve a record monthly production of 697 Bitcoins. Core Scientific, the most prolific Bitcoin miner, attained a total of 1,527 coins mined during the month of January. Riot, the second-most prolific Bitcoin miner, mined a total of 740 Bitcoins over the same time period.
Both Marathon and Cipher have experienced considerable gains in Bitcoin output, with Marathon hitting 687 Bitcoins created and Cipher reaching 343 Bitcoins generated. This compares to 475 and 225 Bitcoins generated respectively in December.
In January, improved weather conditions and more steady costs for energy helped miners increase their productivity, according to the analysis of a Bitcoin mining expert named Jaran Mellerud. "During the month of December, a winter storm swept throughout the continent of North America, which resulted in soaring power bills and intermittently caused many of these businesses to scale down their operations. Miners were able to reach a greater up-time since power costs were able to stabilize throughout the month of January thanks to the improvement in the weather.
The majority of public miners saw their hash rates grow in January, but at a more gradual pace than was anticipated. Cipher, a company located in Texas, is the one notable exception; it increased its hash rate by more than 50 percent, reaching 4.3 EH/s. "During this bad market, Cipher has been working very hard to develop, and I anticipate that the firm will meet its hashrate objective of 6 EH/s of self-mining capacity by the end of the first quarter of 2023," Mellerud stated.
After completing a number of mergers and acquisitions in the latter half of 2022, CleanSpark was able to increase its hash rate to 6.6 EH/s, up from 6.2 EH/s in December. Additionally, in January, Hive saw growth, as seen by an increase in its hash rate of approximately 30 percent, which went from 2.1 to 2.7 EH/s. According to Mellerud, the CEO of Hive, the firm is continually modernizing its GPU fleet with ASICs, the majority of which are in-house developed Buzzminers.
Additionally, Core Scientific has continued to increase its hash rate, which jumped from 15.7 EH/s in December to 17 EH/s in January. The bankruptcy proceedings of the company are expected to have an effect on the figures; these proceedings include a deal with the New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG) to pay off an outstanding debt of $38.6 million by handing over more than 27,000 mining machines used as collateral; these machines represent 18% of Core Scientific rigs. The figures are expected to be impacted by the bankruptcy proceedings of the company.
After many months of struggling financially as a result of rising power bills and falling Bitcoin prices, Core Scientific filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on December 21 in an effort to restructure its obligations and get a fresh start.
Mellerud also brought out the fact that "these corporations have, on more than one occasion, extended the deadline of their ambitious hashrate growth promises." The majority of them have intentions to significantly boost their hashrate that they are now running by the end of the second quarter of this year. At this pace, it is probable that the majority of them will be forced to postpone their growth plans until even farther into the future.